Erich Wolfgang Korngold spoke of this work as his “masterpiece”. HELIANE’S MIRACLE bears all the hallmarks of Korngold’s musical theatre - and goes one step further in scale, with a huge score and orchestra, intoxicating pathos and exquisitely expressive harmonies that play with polytonality - resulting in a gripping and sensuous drama. The world premiere in Hamburg in 1927 was a triumph, with more than a dozen houses booking the latest work by Korngold, at the time the second most performed composer of opera after Richard Strauss. In 1928 the work was presented at the Städtische Oper Berlin, with Bruno Walter directing, but here, as at other venues, the reception was cool, due in part to intrigues, in part to the charge that his Late Romantic score was behind the times. With the Jewish Korngold prevented by the Nazis from presenting his works to the public, HELIANE’S MIRACLE vanished from the repertoire, never to return. This is a timeless fairy tale portraying a cold ruler incapable of loving anyone, his wife Heliane, devoted to a Dionysian stranger, and a people waiting for a redemptory miracle to occur.

A precise psychological analysis of a work’s protagonists is what interests director Christof Loy, who is returning to the Deutsche Oper Berlin after stints here presenting JENUFA, FALSTAFF and EDWARD II. And it falls to Marc Albrecht, for many years a close collaborator with the opera house, to waken Korngold’s grand and opulent music from decades of slumber.

The eagerly awaited premiere of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s HELIANE’S MIRACLE – directed by Christof Loy and under the baton of Marc Albrecht – is scheduled for 18th March and will take place using technical solutions designed to do justice to the work’s artistic vision.

After a break lasting over 90 years, Christof Loy brings a new production of Korngold’s “Heliane’s Miracle” to the Bismarckstraße venue

In March the Deutsche Oper Berlin resurrects a forgotten operatic jewel in the form of “Das Wunder der Heliane - Heliane’s Miracle”. Erich Wolfgang Korngold was one of the most celebrated composers of his period and the announcement that a new opera was on the way sent a ripple of excitement through the opera scene in 1927. For “Das Wunder der Heliane” Korngold wrote a powerful score designed for an ambitiously-staffed orchestra. The storyline is archetypical and timeless: a cold despot incapable of love, his forlorn wife Heliane and a mysterious “stranger” are the three characters at the core of this riveting triangular tale of love, hatred and the wait for redemption. Dramaturg Dorothea Hartmann spoke with director Christof Loy.

“Das Wunder der Heliane” was taken up by 12 stages in the German-speaking area immediately following its world premiere in 1927. Yet a few years later the opera had vanished from programmes and slipped from public memory – right up until today, that is. What happened?Christof Loy: The main reason was that the Nazi regime had slapped a ban on Korngold and all other Jewish composers, preventing them from working. The prohibition also affected the biggest work rivalling Korngold’s piece at the time – Ernst Krenek’s “Jonny spielt auf”, a work that was much more of a hit with audiences than “Heliane”. And with moves afoot after World War II to rehabilitate the composers of so-called “degenerate music”, Korngold had a hard time of it. If you ask me, there was a lack of appreciation of the mystical level and the religiosity of the work. Early in the opera you already have the spheric sounds of the prelude heralding a godhead-based universe. Disillusioned post-war society was perhaps unable and unwilling to grapple with these difficult themes.

You proposed this work to the Deutsche Oper Berlin, a work that hasn’t been performed for decades. Is this the right time?Loy: I don’t find works that deal with God so difficult. I believe in an element or being that establishes order. And I think it’s worth our while to seek out such a figure. And yes, maybe it is right for the times we live in, when people are hankering for spirituality and religiosity.

And is Berlin the right place?Loy: You need a stage and an auditorium of a certain size to accommodate Korngold’s huge score and the full impact of the music. And it makes sense to be putting on the opera here because of the Deutsche Oper’s specific history of works mounted: “Heliane” actually had three premieres in 1927/28 – first in Hamburg, then in Vienna, then at the Städtische Oper Berlin, today’s Deutsche Oper. And in Berlin, an oft prosaic and unpolished city today, maybe it’s interesting to ponder on issues like “love”, “loving thy neighbour” and “com-passion”.

At first glance “Das Wunder der Heliane” appears to be a straightforward love triangle. In the middle we have Heliane, the wife of a ruler who is incapable of love. And then we have a nameless “outsider” on whom Heliane bestows her love. What is it about the story that catches your interest?Loy: The most obvious conflict has to do with a man, in this case the despot, not being able to deal with the fact that his wife has broken her vows. Ok, we can relate to that. But when Heliane defends her love for the stranger in the full glare of publicity, she’s crossing a Rubicon where traditional concepts of love, loyalty and sexuality are concerned. The work invites us to question the very core of our moral codes. Heliane herself is at a loss to explain the shift that has taken place within her. She has stripped bare in front of the stranger, so it totally looks like they’ve just had sex. But for Heliane it’s different: for her it was “love” on a number of levels. Love as a spiritual experience. Love as a Christian deed: you gift yourself to another person. Love as a sharing of the suffering of a condemned man. And love articulated in sensuality and the erotic. Heliane is fully aware that she is being called upon in court to plead guilty or not guilty. And she realises the inadequacy of our concepts of guilt, innocence and morality.

“Das Wunder der Heliane” was written for the great singers of the 1920s. Lotte Lehmann sang the title role in Vienna. The parts are considered physically hard to sing. What challenges are you up against?Loy: The singers have to be fully cognizant of what they are capable of, both in the forte region and in the subtleties of piano. These are very physically demanding roles. And at the same time they have to act the part in a convincing way, not let the dramatic performance get submerged in the effort required to sing it.

In 1927 critics were drawing attention to the “luxuriation of the singing” in this opera. Korngold was pushing the late-romantic style to its limits and again planting the singers’ voices at centre stage – at a time when most composers had stopped doing that.Loy: In the parts of Heliane and the stranger there is a kind of sublimation of Eros going on by way of the singing. We are in the thrall of the eros of the human voice and shriven by the auditory experience. The singing in this opera has something narcotic about it. There is a growing yearning for it never to stop. At key moments of the opera – in Heliane’s aria or the closing duet between Heliane and the stranger – we’re all wishing for it to go on and on forever.

As with all premieres on the main stage, HELIANE’S MIRACLE, too, is getting the treatment from a line-up of guest commentators. The Elektro Duo Amnesia Scanner – made up of Finnish artists Ville Haimala and Martti Kalliala – provide their responses to Korngold’s opulent score, serving up a scintillating, multidimensional splurge combining dancefloor, musique concrète and cryptic noise. Heliane’s voice can be heard both live and in digitally reworked playback. The question of whether the human voice can be reprogrammed stands at the core of this AMBUSHED FROM BEHIND version of an opera that sought to exact the last drop of florid self-indulgence from the songs of this late-romantic opus.

“The resonance of images. Film as an operatic experience.” Such is the sub-heading of the address to be given by Elisabeth Bronfen when she opens the “Opera and Film” symposium on 9th March. Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s reputation not only as one of the most celebrated composers of 1920s opera but also as the man who went down in Hollywood history as the “father of film music” has prompted us to hold this symposium from 9th to 11th March. In a joint undertaking involving the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Musicology Institute of Humboldt University, the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung and the Zeughauskino and featuring talks, discussions and a series of films set to Korngold scores, the symposium will look at the complex relationship between opera and film. The symposium will also overlap with a series of films running at the Zeughauskino between 8th and 23rd March. This mini-season will consist of “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex”, “Deception”, “Kings Row”, “The Constant Nymph”, “Devotion” und “Between Two Worlds”. Don’t miss this opportunity to gorge on these films featuring the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold.